Go here now and look at a chart of corporate profits after taxes. Corporate profits...after taxes....have never been higher than they are right now. In fact, excepting for the Bankster Crash period, the 2000's have been the best period for corporate profits.....ever.

So, why did former President Bill Clinton go out of his way to call for lowering the corporate tax rate in a speech last Tuesday?

Matt Yglesias at Vox.com, barely hides the snark in writing about former President Bill Clinton's "peculiar" recommendations for corporate tax reform.....

Meanwhile, in the real world after-tax corporate profits as a share of overall national income are at an all-time high but median household income is lower than it was in 1999. So for the plight of the overtaxed American corporation to become a leading cause of concern for a Democratic former president and potential First Gentleman of the United States is a bit peculiar.

The Very Serious People in the political world and the media world all agree. Our nation's political polarization problem is simply a matter of "both sides doing it." In this VSP view, the reason the U.S. Congress has been basically gridlocked the last 4 years is because both Democrats and Republicans are equally too stubborn and too ideological to work out compromises for the common good.

This VSP-theory has been made into Conventional Wisdom, and if you pay close attention, you'll hear all the kewlest katz in political-bloviation land spouting that Conventional Wisdom.

When Democrats and Republicans in Congress can't pass legislation — whether on gun control, immigration or climate change — it is often because both sides have dug in with a similar obstinacy. They both think about political information in a partisan, biased manner.

“Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition.”

Let's call this outrageous lie Obama's Colin Powell Moment. Powell made an entirely disingenuous case in front of the UN (remember the vial he used as a prop?) in an ultimately failed attempt to deceive the UN in to giving support to an act of U.S. aggression against Iraq.

"A new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that 55% Americans say the American dream never ever existed in the first place or that it did exist but doesn't anymore. The poll shows just 42% of Americans cling to the notion of the American Dream -- loosely defined as people who work hard being able to get ahead."

Wikipedia describes the American Dream this way....The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work.

“I don’t think my education should be censored. We should be able to know what happened in our past,” said Tori Leu, a 17-year-old student who protested at Ralston Valley High School in Arvada.

Is Tori Leu correct? Should the education of high schoolers not be censored? Do U.S. K-12 students have the right to learn the ENTIRE history of the United States, or just the history conservative censors would have them learn?

Yes, I realize that those questions may seem a bit nutty....seeing that America is so exceptional and all....but.....

With “respect to Syria,” said the president, the notion that arming the rebels would have made a difference has “always been a fantasy. This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.”

Fast forward one month to Sept 9, 2014......President Obama....

"Across the border, in Syria, we have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition. Tonight, I again call on Congress to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters."

One of the wackiest farces out there is the conservative conspiracy in dozens of states to trim Democratic votes via the ruse called voter ID laws. Republicans and conservatives have argued, disingenuously, that the vote needs protecting and that in-person voter fraud is a threat to our electoral system.

Of course, the truth is that In-person voter fraud is virtually non-existent. Republicans pushing voter ID laws have been seeking to stop a problem that doesn't exist. Numerous judges have struck down or delayed implementation of state voter ID laws finding them discriminatory against poorer and minority voters who don't have driver's licenses. it hasn't been coincidental that minority and poorer voters tend to vote Democratic.

People like me have been explaining for years now that Republican-led states who have passed voter ID laws have been conspiring to disenfranchise Democratic-leaning voters from casting their votes....in order to rig elections, ever so slightly, and especially in races expected to be close, in the GOP's direction.

Today, I'm recommending this short article found at Salon.com. A 56 year old Texas woman details her experience with her Tea Party Republican uncle. Many of the notes struck in the article may seem familiar.

Synopsis: Large, close knit Texas family gathers for a reunion. Tea Party uncle requests all family member's e-mail addresses so family members can keep in touch. Shortly after the reunion, the 56 year old niece of Tea Party uncle begins receiving hateful, Tea Party-inspired e-mails from Tea Party uncle. Niece requests of uncle to be taken off e-mailing list. The response.....

My uncle-that-I-recently-hugged emailed me back and angrily expressed his incredulity to my request. His anger took me by surprise as I read comments such as … I must have wanted to get back at him. I must not want to know the truth about our country. I should know that his friends on the mailing list had not-so-kind things to say about me. I drank the entire pitcher of Obama Kool-Aid. I should also know that he has opinions about non-Christian abortion-loving gay marriage-supporting liberals and that is, we are doomed to hell. Therefore, he will never email me again on any matter, will never speak to me again, and cannot pray for me because I cannot be a liberal and a Christian at the same time. He promised to not waste his time praying for me or ever speak to me again.

The dynamic at work in that anecdotal account is similar to that found in a religious cult. Here at the blog I have often mentioned the Christopher Hitchens line...."religion poisons everything"......not to bash an individual's personal religious beliefs....but to express how religious belief systems actually divide humans rather than uniting them.

In what was hyped as a potential road map for House Republicans in the 114th Congress, Speaker John A. Boehner laid out a five-point vision for creating growth and mobility in America on Thursday.

Proving once again that conservatism never changes, Boehner, and without cracking himself up in laughter, laid out his "roadmap" for government action in the Age of Disparity (and despair). Here are Boehner's "five points".....

Do you recall what Very Serious Republicans informed us about the 2014 midterm campaign? Let me remind.......here's one from April of this year.....

"We do want to make sure that Obamacare is the number one issue in the country," Tim Phillips, president of Americans For Prosperity (Koch group) said in a recent interview.

Here's one from January of this year....

RNC Chair Reince Priebus confirmed that the ACA will be the GOP's focus going into the elections. He said, "Obamacare is going to be the issue in 2014." He added, "The law stinks, and it's a disaster. It's not possible for this not to be the No. 1 issue in the 2014 elections" (Elliott, AP/ABC News, 1/7).

That great "deliberative" body known as the U.S. Senate voted yesterday to fund the Unknown Syrian Moderate Rebels (USMR) by a margin of 78-22 with only 9 Democrats voting no. I'm pleased to tell you that Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown was one of those nine no votes.

Starting and funding wars is so commonplace for our illustrious, representative Leaders that the bill to fund the USMR was simply attached to a Continuing Funding Resolution to keep the government open......at least until December. Sure, the funding is only good for 90 days...after which Congress must "review" the situation. But when has Congress agreed to fund a war and then later reversed their decision? I can't think of any such reversals.

The rollout of the new "fall line" war product has been a rousing success. So...yay U.S.A.

You see, the U.S. must fight the evil-doers over there....so our wondrous freedoms can be preserved over here.

As I have mentioned previously, the only issue where congressional bipartisanship can be found is in warmongering. 159 House Republicans and 114 House Democrats voted in favor yesterday, in effect, declaring war on the country of Syria. 85 Democrats and 71 Republicans voted against the new war measure. The final vote was 273- 156.

That vote count mirrors the House vote in the fall of 2002 when the Bush administration asked Congress to agree on attacking the non-threatening nation of Iraq. The final vote count in the House in 2002 was 296-133.

The voted upon measure was for the purpose of funding and training "rebels" in Syria. Those would be the "moderate" rebels yet to be named......so, what could possibly go wrong?

I don't care about the return of LeBron. I don't care anything about someone called Johnny Football. I don't care who is winning, who is in the Superbowl, or who is playing in the Finals. And I sure as hell do not care about guys named Ray Rice or Adrian Peterson. I didn't know anything about those two names before they became headline fodder....and I do not care to know anything about them now.

But I am interested in the discussion over how children should be disciplined.....in the wake of the pictures released involving Adrian Peterson. I am interested in this viewpoint, as expressed by former NBA player Charles Barkley.....

"I think the question about whether Adrian Peterson went overboard ... Listen, Jim, we all grow up in different environments. Every black parent in my neighborhood in the South would be in trouble or in jail under those circumstances," Barkley said.

"....Whipping — we do that all the time. Every black parent in the south is going to be in jail under those circumstances," Barkley told Jim Rome of CBS Sports.

Over the weekend, I asked some conservative family members if they supported raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. One family member said she didn't think fast food workers deserved to make $15 per hour. No specific reason offered. Just that she felt like they didn't deserve to make that much per hour.

How many fast food workers are there in the U.S.? Approximately 4 million.

How many American workers make less than $15 per hour? 51 million. Which means that over one third of the 144 million Americans who are employed earn less than $15 per hour. One third.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour will positively affect the lives of 51 million working Americans. With income disparities off the charts.....that is why raising the minimum to $15 is the right thing to do.

Osama bin Laden is dead now...but his words taunting the U.S. in 2004.....live on.

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said.

"Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs,"

The U.S. is planning a campaign against ISIS that may take as many as three years of sustained effort to complete, including attacking the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s redoubt in Syria, according to senior officials in the Obama administration.

Thousands of dead and severely wounded U.S. military personnel. Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, Afghanis, Yemenis, etc. Trillions of U.S. tax dollars spent. And what do we have to show for all of it?.....

While there is no specific threat against New York ahead of the Thursday commemoration, the rising power of disparate militant groups around the world presents the most complex terrorism danger since the twin towers were destroyed, New York intelligence officials said this week.

“It is layer upon layer upon layer — not all coming from the same place or ideology,” said John Miller, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism.

Thirteen years after the fact and the commemoration of 9-11 in New York City will look like a militarily occupied war zone. No, the home of the brave has "no specific threat" from anyone...but "the rising power of disparate militant groups" is enough to scare the pants off the citizens of the world's lone superpower.

Todd, like David Gregory and Tim Russert before him, used the "gotcha" form of questioning that is so prevalent in corrupt U.S. corporate media today. Todd's style is fitting for the navel-gazing, self-absorbed age we now live in. In our self-absorbed age, the job of the MTP moderator is to "make" news....not report it. In that dynamic, everything is all about the moderator. Can the moderator get the interviewee to say something he/she hasn't said before or....can the moderator get the interviewee to contradict something he/she said previously? If so, then, you see, the moderator has "made news."

It's all so predictably nauseating and unhelpful.

For example: Todd feigned deep concern over the fact that, under Obama, nothing is getting done.....

In 2004, when warmongering draft dodgers flexed their...jaws.....trying to impersonate authentic tough guys....Karl Rove offered up the operational principle by which the United States oligarch/military police state functions....

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

"we create our own reality"

When Rove said those words, he actually wasn't speaking partisanly, in my opinion. Sure, Turdblossom had bought options on his own bullshite stock about some laughable "permanent Republican majority".....but in his above statement the repulsive Rove was, I think, accurately describing how all of Washington works now.

What is so wonderful about the post-racism age Americans live in is that black Americans no longer have to worry about authorities singling them out for execution for being, you know, black. Yes sir buddy, the age of colorblindness has its benefits.

You see, before America put it's long racist history permanently behind it back in 1965 with national civil rights legislation, black Americans had to always worry, when they went into the marketplace, whether they would make it home alive. But now in 2014, almost 50 years after majority whites in the U.S. finally ushered in "equality".....black Americans can rest easy knowing that they are fully protected under the law....just like their white brethren.

As a white male boomer who has seen genuine white authoritarian racism, The Reverend is oh-so-pleased that in his golden effing years all that ugliness is finally over......

LeeCee Johnson, who said she is the mother of (John) Crawford’s children, said she was on a cell phone call with Crawford when he was shot by officers. She said Crawford went to the area to visit family members.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. this week will launch a broad civil rights investigation into the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department, according to two federal law enforcement officials.

A 1994 federal law gave the civil rights division (of the Justice Department) the authority to probe whether police departments are engaging in a “pattern or practice” of violating constitutional rights or federal rights. The law was enacted after the videotaped beating of African American motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

Obviously, this is yet another effort by Big Government Barry & The Jackbooters to take away southern "states rights".....to do with their colored folk as they so choose.

Conservatives inform me that what this nation needs in the White House is a person who has been a state governor. You see, state governors, Republican ones, are the shite. Republican governors balance budgets and, you know, run stuff.

Obviously, there are Democratic governors out there as well, but Democratic governors, even though they too must balance budgets and...run stuff....are actually closeted communists, or worse. That according to conservatives, aka "real Americans."

As you may know, several GOP governors are being considered for the 2016 GOP presidential candidacy. 'I'm dead inside' Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Baby Huey in New Jersey, Howdy Doody impersonator, Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, and the newly metrosexualized Rick Perry of Texas. Former Virginia GOP governor Bob McDonnell used to be on the GOP's short list for 2016....and still might be....depending on what the jury in his corruption case decides. And of course there's always Mitt Romney, who, if you can believe it, is being seriously considered by a few desperate conservative patriots.

On the fringes of Republicanism, Ted Cruz, the senator who won't settle for anything less than burning Washington to the ground.....Rand Paul, the senator who fully defends civil rights protections for minorities against a bigoted government but not bigoted business owners.......and Dr. Ben Carson, a surgeon whose claim to fame is blatantly insulting a sitting president at a f**king prayer breakfast....are all being touted as presidential material.

Robert Parry has a new article over at Consortium News dealing with the "Big Lie" being told to U.S. citizens concerning the Ukrainian situation. The piece seeks to rebut a screed of propaganda from the Washington Post on the topic.

The latest U.S. media propaganda is claiming that Russia has now "invaded" Ukraine. But just as U.S. media propagandists claimed that Russian or pro-Russian Ukrainian "rebels" shot down the Malaysian airliner.....no proof is being offered. Like supply side economics, Russian aggression in the Ukraine must be accepted by faith alone.

Parry....

Concerned about the latest rush to judgment about the “invasion,” the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of former U.S. intelligence officials and analysts, took the unusual step of sending a memo to German Chancellor Angela Merkel warning her of a possible replay of the false claims that led to the Iraq War.

I have believed for quite awhile now that important and well-heeled Saudis helped with funding and logistics of the 9-11 attack inside the U.S. At this point, I think at least some important Saudis wanted a more robust U.S. military presence in the middle east to prevent Shia Muslims in Iran and Iraq from overwhelming majority-Sunni Muslim countries, like Saudi. 9-11 provided the motivation.

I mention those things again today because it sure seems to me like Saudi Arabian leaders are doing everything they can...again...to drag the U.S. into a full fledged Sunni-Shia Muslim war.

While not mentioning any terrorist groups by name, King Abdullah's statement appeared aimed at drawing Washington and NATO forces into a wider fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and its supporters in the region. Saudi Arabia openly backs rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, but is concerned that the breakaway al Qaeda group could also turn those very same weapons on the kingdom.

"drawing Washington and NATO forces into a wider fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria...."